Golf Equipment Price Index, August 2026

Published 2026-09-14. Base month June 2026 = 100. 10 categories, 62,054 daily retailer prices across thousands of products.

August held flat. The discounts did not.

Index by category

Not published this month for thin coverage: Rangefinders (16 paired products), Complete sets (30 paired products).

Commentary

Written 2026-09-16

Across the ten categories with enough paired products to publish, the August 2026 index landed between 97.9 and 101.0 against a June base of 100. No category moved more than 2.1 points. The headline number says golf equipment prices did not move this summer. That is true at the median and misleading everywhere else.

The movement was under the median. Two thirds of drivers (66.7 percent) and fairway woods (68.5 percent) were observed below list price in August, with a median markdown of 30.9 and 33.2 percent when a markdown existed. Iron sets ran 67.2 percent below list at a 25.7 percent median markdown. These are 2025 and early 2026 models being cleared while the current models hold their launch price, which is why the index sits at 100 while the shelf looks like a sale.

Shoes and gloves are the exception that proves it. Every glove observed (100 percent) was below list, and 80 percent of shoes were, yet both indexes fell only 2.1 and 0.5 points. Soft goods are priced to promote year round, so the June base already carried the discount. A markdown that is always on is not a price cut, it is the price.

Golf balls did the opposite. Only 16.7 percent of ball listings were below list, the lowest share of any category, and the index sat at 100.1. Ball pricing is the most disciplined shelf in golf: 32 retailers, 10,938 observations, and almost nobody breaks the printed price. Individual movers were real but idiosyncratic, personalized and monogram packs swinging 30 to 50 percent as retailers rotated promotions rather than repriced the core product.

Putters carried the widest retailer coverage among clubs (26 retailers) and the shallowest discounting (40.5 percent below list, 11.1 percent median markdown). Putters hold value at retail the way they hold value used, which is the strongest argument in this data for pricing used putters against new rather than against MSRP.

What to expect in September: the clearance share on drivers and fairway woods has nowhere to go but up as fall model announcements approach, and the ball shelf will stay flat until the first 2027 model is announced. We will publish September against the same June base on or before October 14.

Movers

Product movers compare the median daily low in June to the median daily low in August for products priced at least 10 days in both months. Listings that swapped variants, demo or used sets, and non-brand accessories are excluded from the table. The full unfiltered list is in the report.